Why did a single flower magnetize me? What can a flower — or a painting of a flower — do when you are lost in a blizzard? I myself wasn’t sure. Initially, I thought it was just the simple ...

Balthasar van der Ast specialized in painting flowers, and, like other flower painters he used existing ... but that great artworks seem to capture a single moment in perfect perpetuity.

Yet in the years since his far-too-early death in 1890, the world has decreed Van Gogh a master and his sunflower works of genius. When the New York Botanical Garden announced its exhibit of ...